Al Jazeera Media Network Opens Online Innovation Challenge

The innovation and research group at Al Jazeera Media Network has kicked off a community initiative with its online Innovation Challenge. This is an open competition aiming to surface new ideas about storytelling in mobile and web applications.

The Innovation Challenge competition offers substantial rewards, including the possibility of future incubation of winning ideas, invitations to large innovation events in the future, and $25,000 in cash prizes.

Morad Rayyan from Al Jazeera Innovation and Research invited software designers, technologists, and developers from around the world to participate:

"The topic of exploration for this first Challenge will be ‘nonlinear narratives’.

"Typically, the stories and content we create and consume are linear, and follow a logical, cause and effect structure. Yet our minds and memories work in a nonlinear way, and this offers an opportunity for new types of storytelling, and new methods of media consumption.

"The applications and software put together for the Innovation Challenge should provide new, flexible, and reusable methods of creating or consuming such nonlinear narratives."

Al Jazeera is looking for participants from its global audience with a variety of expertise, ranging from idea conception, through design/prototyping, and all the way to development. Full eligibility requirements are available on the challenge website.

Participants can go to http://aljazeera.challengepost.com and register. The submission period will be open until September 30, 2014, 14:00 GMT.